Jeff Bridges

What are [the Bible’s] underlying values? I would argue that they are rooted in love of neighbor, which Jewish and Christian commentators over the ages have identified as the essential and enduring message of the Bible.

Here are three of them. The great Rabbi Hillel, who when asked what the basic principle of the Torah was, replied: “What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor: That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary.” His words are echoed both by his near-contemporary, another rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, who put it this way: “Whatever you wish people to do to you, so you should do to them: for this is the Law and the Prophets,” and by an early leader in the movement that Jesus started, the rabbinically trained Paul, who pronounced that “Love is the fulfilling of the law.”

So, I suggest, the essence of the Bible — its ultimate authority — is not in its individual pronouncements, but in its underlying message: equal, even loving, treatment of all persons, regardless of their age, gender, socio-economic status, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.